At Your Surf-ice!

In chapter 6, Lanier discussed a very crucial and fairly expensive pitfall of the internet : Corruption. However, I would like to repeat his first statement that “corruption has always been possible without computers”. Now that we’ve established this I can discuss my views on the increased corruption caused by technology. Corruption is inevitable, people are sick and twisted and feel the need to cheat every system. I agree wholeheartedly that corruption has certainly enhanced because of the internet, from identity theft to credit card fraud to computer hacking and the list can go on.

However, in the end, I always go back to the fact that mankind created the internet, we are in this mess because of ourselves , we always go above and beyond when creating technological advancements and then we’re baffled when others pounce on the negatives. When inventing something you must consider all the possible pros and cons just in case it falls into destructible hands. I believe the same attitude should have been applied to the internet, we underestimated it…a whole new technological world has been created and it is now out of our control. People in the world are smarter than you think, if codes can be created that means it can also be broken, so isn’t it our fault that we didn’t think far ahead? Initially, I know that the internet was supposed to serve an informational purpose , whether it be educational or recreational, but too much information is readily available now, hence the increased levels of corruption.

I dare you to type anything in Google’s search engine and I promise you a response will be provided, not necessarily what you were originally looking for but still something relating to the subject matter. If you spend enough time and you type in the correct keywords there is a big chance of you finding some very interesting things. You can even search your family members, I’ve searched my name before and information about my facebook account and other details were promptly provided for the public’s perusal. I think it’s disturbing if you ask me, so can you imagine if someone devotes a couple hours a day to research someone, chances are they’ll come across personal information such as birth name and date, bank information, current location, pictures and maybe even a brief historical background. This is a result of private information that is connected to the internet. I came across this website : http://www.safeinternet.org/about/internet-corruption which provides information about all different types of online corruption and possible solutions for such problems. Basically they act as the police- simply making an honest attempt to make the internet a safe place for all of us.